


Lost and Found

by stickyrice



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Fluff, River x The Doctor - Freeform, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 16:48:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6762142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickyrice/pseuds/stickyrice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor has always felt like he had lost something even when he didn't know what that something was ... and he has been searching through time and space since as far back as he could remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost and Found

**Author's Note:**

> So this could be a one off, this was just an idea that popped into my head. I have some ideas of how to continue it if it's not too terrible so let me know either way :)

Have you ever searched for something you didn’t know you were missing until you found it? That feeling that something was amiss but you didn’t know what it was. It seemed that all his lives he was searching for something that he could not find- but he didn’t exactly know what was missing.

At first he thought it was freedom from the oppression of rules and way of life on Gallifrey, but running away, although alleviating the sensation a bit, the feeling of something missing would creep back in. 

Then he thought it was redemption- that he was searching and was trying to find redemption for what he had done by letting Gallifrey burn, but he would save civilization after civilization, and it would still not lessen the sensation.

He found it once, for a time, but at that time in his lives he was too oblivious to know that he had found it, rather putting the sensation of being whole down to the running and adventures that he found with the Ponds.

But then one day it was gone again, but he had no idea why because if anything he pushed himself harder, further, and faster with Clara at his side.

Maybe, maybe he was missing home- that had to be it, because that was the one thing that was lost in his life, literally. But then he found it again, and it was all he could do, to not turn right back around as soon as he got there. It wasn’t because he was afraid that what he would find there would be so different from what he remembered, if anything he knew without a doubt that it would be exactly the same, and if it was the same, he knew that he would not find what he was searching for there. And besides home was home and if he was being honest with himself he never liked it there anyway.

He looked up at the display screen at the central console of the TARDIS and knew he would find what he was looking for on the planet below. It had taken him millions and billions of years, but now he finally knew.

He changed the view to take in the deserted planet; the endless dark shadows clashing with the sun hanging high in the sky. Switching the image again, he found it, right where he knew he had left it; its bright blue, in stark contrast to the ledge that he placed it one before walking away.

It was her; it was him; it was them, right there between the pages. It might have taken him an adventure the long way round, but he had finally found what he was missing.

As he looked at the forgotten (but not really, it was always there in the back of his mind) diary, he thought of her; her smile, her wit, her elegance.

_I’ve searched for you in everyone throughout time and space, but no one could compare to you. Maybe that is why I am always running; maybe that is why I go through so many companions. I’m just trying to hold on to you a little bit longer, but they are just echoes of you._

_I was looking for you before I even knew you._

_In Rose, your loyalty and unwavering faith._

_Dona- your brash nature and feisty attitude._

_Martha- your intelligence._

_Clara (not that I really remember her but the TARDIS has been telling me)- your unwillingness to back down from a challenge._

_But they were only pieces of you and never could be you. I have always been searching for you, even before I knew you, and even when I did find you, I didn’t know it, it was only when I lost you again that I knew what I  had lost._

He presses some buttons, twirls some knobs, flips some switches, and then finally cranks the main leaver, and with a whining, grating whirl, the mad man and his blue box materializes on the planet’s surface.


End file.
